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From Dancing Queen to dancing… knights? ABBA reunited on Friday in their home country Sweden to receive the Royal Order of Vasa, which makes them Commanders of the First Class in recognition of their “very outstanding efforts in Swedish and international music life,” according to Variety.
Even though the group previously said that they don't have plans to get together after they recorded their 2021 comeback album, they attended the event held at the Kungliga slotten or the Swedish Royal Palace to receive the honors from the king and queen.
Meet Sweden's newest knights and ladies
Agnetha Faltskog, Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Anni-Frid Lyngstad received the knighthoods four days after Andersson and Ulvaeus were at the ABBA Arena in London to celebrate ABBA Voyage's second anniversary. The avatar show was playing at the custom-built venue. They did a Q&A for the approximately 3,000 audience at the event. Faltskog and Lyngstad were not in attendance.
The Order of Vasa had been dormant for at least 50 years before the government revived the granting of knighthoods in 2022. The ABBA members were among the 13 recipients. The nominations for the candidates come from both the general public and the Swedish government. King Carl XVI Gustav selects the final honorees, who also handed out the knighthoods alongside Queen Silvia. Other recipients include two physicists who received the Nobel Prize in 2023.
During the Q&A in London, Andersson and Ulvaeus were mum about their future plans. However, they were enthusiastic about their avatars performing at Glastonbury.
“Oh yes, I think that's a brilliant idea,” Ulvaeus said.
“If they go to Glastonbury, I think we'd need an extra piano player,” Andersson added, saying that he might go with if it happens.
An ABBA-tar reunion?
However, it seems unclear if ABBA — the actual people — would reunite after their Grammy-nominated reunion album Voyage. When Andersson spoke with Variety in 2022, he confirmed that they had closed ABBA's last chapter together.
“It's never say never, but it's a no. Nothing is going to happen after this. Yes, [the Voyage album] did well. But no,” he stated.
However, during the London Q&A, the songwriting duo seemed cheerful and wistful, mostly in a reminiscing mood.
“It's very, very hard to grasp emotionally that we wrote these little songs and it gave rise to this, and the millions of people we have touched,” Andersson said to the audience which included celebrities such as Rick Astley and Joanna Lumley.
“We know it's true, but it's very hard to understand. Maybe impossible,” he continued.
“I've seen the show so many times and I think we look good up there,” Ulvaeus added.
“But I have no idea what it really is that makes people have it in them to want to listen to music that was done 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago,” he continued.
Although it wasn't discussed at the London event, there have been rumors stateside of an upcoming third Mamma Mia! movie based on the group's songs. Producer Judy Craymer told the magazine last year that it's inevitable.
“I'm in the privileged position that I have Universal Studios wanting to do it, who I love working with, and I have a storyline,” she said during a discussion about a talent competition that was inspired by original theater production.
“It just always takes a certain amount of time with ‘Mamma Mia.' Bjorn and Benny always take a certain amount of convincing. I don't know how much more convincing they're gonna have because everybody wants another film. But they had ABBA Voyage and then they wanted a rest from ABBA stuff. But it will happen,” Craymer added.
A brief of history of ABBA
The Swedish pop supergroup was formed in 1972 and has sold between 150 million to 385 million records globally, making them the best-selling Swedish band of all time. The palindromic group are the first Swedish winners of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, with the song Waterloo. In 2005, the song was chosen as the best in the competition's history during its 50th anniversary celebration. The group disbanded in 1982.
In 2023, ABBA was awarded the BRIT Billion Award, given to artists who have gone over one billion UK streams in their career. They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2010, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the first recording artists to receive this honor from outside an English-speaking country.
In 2015, Dancing Queen was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame. This year, ABBA's 1976 album Arrival was included by the United States Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry.
The group's song catalog was adapted into a stage musical in 1999, Mamma Mia!, which was also adapted into a film in 2008 starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Amanda Seyfried. Both Andersson and Ulvaeus made a cameo in the movie as the piano player in the Dancing Queen scene and as someone dressed as a Greek god in the end credits, respectively.
